Simonfletcher > Simonfletcher's Quotes

“When I cannot read, when I cannot think, when I cannot even pray, I can trust.”
― Hudson Taylor

“All God's giants have been weak men who did great things for God because they reackoned on God being with them.”
― J. Hudson Taylor

“I am no longer anxious about anything, as I realize that He is able to carry out His will for me. It does not matter where He places me, or how. That is for Him to consider, not me, for in the easiest positions He will give me grace, and in the most difficult ones His grace is sufficient.”
― Hudson Taylor

“There are three stages to every great work of God; first it is impossible, then it is difficult, then it is done.”
― Hudson Taylor

“God's work done in God's way will never lack God's provision.”
― Hudson Taylor

“God's work done in God's way will never lack God's supply.”
― Hudson Taylor

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.”
― C.S. Lewis

“The great thing to remember is that though our feelings come and go God's love for us does not.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance, the only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.”
― Anonymous

“You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you," said the Lion.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair

“Nothing you have not given away will ever really be yours.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“In friendship...we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years' difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another...the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting--any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," can truly say to every group of Christian friends, "Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another." The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

“He's not safe, but he's good (referring to Aslan, the Lion, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)”
― C. S. Lewis

“As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on thing and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down you cannot see something that is above you.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“And there on the piss-soaked cobbles, his back to the alley and his face to the wall, lay the object of their diplomatic mission: A sleeping drunk. Colt lay out his hand in a flourish.
“Mr. Billings, may I introduce to you His Imperial Majesty Joshua Norton the First, Emperor of the United States of America and Protector of Mexico.”
― Jordan Stratford, Mechanicals: A Steampunk Novel of the Crimean War

“All novels are fantasies. Some are more honest about it.”
― Gene Wolfe

“People don't want other people to be people.”
― Gene Wolfe, Shadow & Claw

“The world’s twenty-seven richest people own more wealth than the poorest five billion, and people accept that as normal.”
― David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks

“Empires die, like all of us dancers in the strobe-lit dark. See how the light needs shadows. Look: wrinkles spread like mildew over our peachy sheen; beat-by-beat-by-beat-by-beat-by-beat-by-beat, varicose veins worm through plucked calves; torsos and breasts fatten and sag...as last year's song hurtles into next year's song and the year after that, and the dancers' hairstyles frost, wither, and fall in chemotherapeutic tufts; cancer spatters inside this tarry lung, in that ageing pancreas, in this aching bollock; DNA frays like wool, and down we tumble; a fall on the stairs, a heart-attack, a stroke; not dancing but twitching...They knew it in the Middle Ages. Life is a terminal illness.”
― David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks

“marriage can, should, and must evolve. Don’t be alarmed, and don’t resent it. Be patient and kind, unflaggingly. In the long run, it’s the unasked-for hot-water bottles on winter nights that matter more than the extravagant gestures.”
― David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks

“Spring adds, summer multiplies, autumn subtracts, winter divides.”
― David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks

“In the corridor outside, a trolley squeaks by. The brigadier I knew has left his bombed-out face, leaving me alone with the clock, shelves of handsome books nobody ever reads, and one certainty: that whatever I do with my life, however much power, wealth, experience, knowledge, or beauty I’ll accrue, I, too, will end up like this vulnerable old man. When I look at Brigadier Reginald Philby, I’m looking down time’s telescope at myself.”
― David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks

“Not a clue – and, no, I don’t touch drugs. The world’s unstable enough without scrambling your brain for kicks.”
― David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks

“Life’s more science-fictiony by the day.”
― David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks

“She has four sons,” Nurse Purvis leads me on, “all with a London post code, but they never visit. You’d think old age was a criminal offense, not a destination we’re all heading to.” I consider airing my theory that our culture’s coping strategy towards death is to bury it under consumerism and Sansara, that the Riverside Villas of the world are screens that enable this self-deception, and that the elderly are guilty: guilty of proving to us that our willful myopia about death is exactly that.”
― David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks

“Look around. Walk. Find a cheap bed. Eat what the locals eat. Find a cheap beer. Try not to get fleeced. Talk. Pick up a few words in the local lingo. Just BE there, y'know? Sometimes," Brubeck bites into an apple, "Sometimes I want to be everywhere, all at once, so badly I could just...Do you ever get that feeling?”
― David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks

“Adverbs are cholesterol in the veins of prose. Halve your adverbs and your prose pumps twice as well.” Pens scratch. “Oh, and beware of the verb ‘seem’; it’s a textual mumble. And grade every simile and metaphor from one star to five, and remove any threes or below. It hurts when you operate, but afterwards you feel much better.”
― David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks